Do You Hate The Rich As Much As We Do? Part 1

“Yeah,” said Mickey and Moe, this here furbirdsqueerly must be a hate blog. Haters gonna hate. “I wonder,” said Mickey to Moe, “is there such a thing as positive hate?” You know a good kind like the kind within the statement I HATE RICH PEOPLE! and to that add a passion for real change. Is there really anything wrong with inciting intense dislike for the rich, for what they do to all of us? Some expect me to love them, love trumps hate as they tell me, send out that love, and with all that burning love they will change their ways and do that which is right. You’ll feel so much better as you starve in their splendor, as they send their minions in to beat you, spray your face, jail you, throw you out of your home or kill you in the streets. I was brought up on the other side of town where when we reached for the fruits of the rich man, got ourselves slapped and our asses burned for stealing his fruit off of the heavily laden trees. Even the apples on the ground were forbidden, “Better to stay there and rot, feed the bees.” “They got to eat too.” That was my first introduction to I am rich you are poor get the fuck off my property, chased off the land by a gun totting lick ass handy man of Mr. and Mrs. Rich. Mandy got caught and dragged home to her mother where she was promptly spanked and told not to hang out with me anymore and to never ever go over to that side of town again. Your father needs his job at the thread mill. The trouble with it all was that Mr. Rich controlled 90 percent of the jobs in that small town and to go up against his high holy ass would spell trouble for anyone. To go up against him would mean, you had better get out of town and find somewhere else to work as suddenly everything closed down for you and your family. Mr. Henry wanted to shoot him but his wife said, “I wouldn’t spend one second in jail for the likes of that bastard.” Now I want to remind folks reading this that this was not back way back in the day like 1605 or something. No this was in the 1950’s in a small New England town. “Feudalism,” said Goosey, “survived.” “Yeah, you know,” said Mickey, “that sure made an impression on young pink.”

Does anyone really think that I a little trouble maker from way back was gonna sit back and take it. My best friend no longer was my best friend all because of fright instilled in folks by the rich man. Nope, one day in the month of May I sneaked over to Mr. Rich’s cow pasture and opened the gate, slid back into the woods and watched. Well pretty soon old Betsy cow came over saw the gate was opened and went out. Out she went followed by some of the other cows. Yeah, Betsy and all the girls, the grass is greener over there, down the street, somewhere else. Go, go, go to wherever there is to go. You’re free. Shoo, Shoo, run away. Go on down to Main Street and cause a traffic jam ruckus in the village center. Sharon and Peter’s goose did it once and got on the front page of the afternoon newspaper. Who let the cows out, who let the cows out who, who, who. Well I ran all the way home and no one was wiser about who let the cows out. Yeah we saw it first hand. How much the rich folks and the folks who wished to lick their bottoms clean hated us on our side of town. If that rich Beaven boy could take Marge Smith out to the island, rape her and leave her there to die and no one do anything about it as the family bought his way out and she was a tramp, looking for some money, hoping to snag a rich boy and besides her father was a drunk and her mother eked out a living the best she could. No boys and girls not much had changed in all of those years. Some still hold the stick over our heads, wielding the baton of power and keeping us all down and in a short line.

Why do folks hate the rich. Are we jealous of them? Hardly. How about this America’s economy has grown out of recession for the past seven years, but the vast majority of that growth has gone to the wealthy instead of working people? Could it have to do with the fact that the stock market has increased vastly since 2007, but wages have not only stagnated, they’ve declined. How about in San Francisco where the poor and working class are being thrown out of their homes for the wealthy techies. Over and over again we hear about more and more folks becoming homeless because of the gentrifying of the city. More and more we read about statements from these rich folks against the poor and working class. Isn’t it time to start the ball rolling and and do what needs to be done. Their mere presence disgusts me. Nothing is going to change if we love them. No they won’t change, but only we will have that opportunity of change even if it isn’t the type of change that is good for us. We will sink down and down some of us will die on the way down and then everyone will wonder how the hell did we get so down. These folks who take at every turn and give very little back. Oh for the days of the guillotine! Oh for the days of a real uprising, with out the slogans of love, love love, all you need is love. As was stated by Robespierre, “To defend the oppressed against their oppressors, to plead the cause of the weak against the strong who exploit and crush them, this is the duty of all hearts that have not been spoiled by egoism and corruption.”

Look where all this love, love got so many of the folks in San Francisco. They now have nowhere to go. They got homelessness and the workers who are well on their way to becoming the rich got the housing. I read the other week that summer interns at some of these tech companies make any where from $6,666 a month along with a $9,000 stipend, to Twitch’s $10,500 a month. Pinterest also based in San Francisco pays $9,000 a month. So what does the poor and working class folks who are getting kicked out of their housing suppose to think? What are they to do? Is screaming out in front of the rich folks house, blocking their work buses, or making noise outside of their homes enough? A minor annoyance, a fly or bee at a picnic. That’s all. Their life goes on as normal 30 mins later when the rabble have gone off to their daily activities. But if someone goes and blows them sky high he or she would be called a terrorist? Let’s call that person what they are a revolutionary of the first order. One that lights the way. She who stands with the oppressed rather than the oppressor. We all know that things are not going to change because a rich mans heart now beats along to the sound of our drum dropping crumbs with each pulse. Nah, you can bet it is going to get worse and worse. Here is an interesting special report from Business Insider. Check it out:

I hate the rich in the sense that I don’t like a multi-billion dollar company without the common good in mind controlling large aspects of how society works, or abusing it’s position in society to accumulate more wealth from poor people. I do not hate them because they have money, but I do hate those that have so much money because of abuse of power or position etc and still aren’t satisfied with several million dollars a year. You know its nice the liberal in the video above building affordable housing but we have to ask, if the other necessities of life are near by. An affordable grocery store? A laundromat? Bus stops? Inexpensive clothing stores. hardware stores, community centers for lunches and dinners a food bank (yes many of us are still hungry even if we have a roof over our head.) a pharmacy. So many times with gentrification one sees what follows, fern bars, expensive coffee shops, boutique food emporiums, expensive designer stores. You get the picture. So affordable roofs over ones head in the lap of luxury and still the line sharply divides.

I hate them when they take away our homes and confine us to squatting on blankets holding out our hands or sleeping in tent cities or overflowing shelters. We firmly believe housing, like health care, is a human right, that it should not be based on ability to pay, and that any system that doesn’t cover everyone isn’t a success and that system must and has to be abolished. Let us base the struggle on our needs not on the needs of the developers, the business community or the politicians. No matter how many times these people tell us that we the homeless have done something wrong, that we take drugs, are lazy, that we are losers and should be scorned we must answer them, no it is you that is the problem and it is you that we must unite and fight against. Too many people still are playing Mr. and Mrs. Nice. Isn’t it time we get over that? Playing nice is a tool, a tool used by the rich and the ruling class. Really folks do we want to be their tools in this struggle or do we really want to stop the intrusions that they make into our lives? Do we want to be seen as disposable, as inferiors, as people who deserve to suffer because in their eyes we just can’t make it? Do we want to see millions being squandered in death and destruction of workers and the poor all over the planet while they make huge profits on misery?

“Property is not the sacred right. When a rich man becomes poor it is a misfortune, it is not a moral evil. When a poor man becomes destitute, it is a moral evil, teeming with consequences and injurious to society and morality.” Lord Acton

No we are going to say it and we are going to say it again as we have for so many years. Maybe we are old, maybe we are past our time, maybe our time is yet to come. Let’s make the space yet to be defined starting with this slogan.

How harsh is life when one has nothing surrounded by all that some have? These are facts from the National Alliance to End Homelessness:

“In the U.S., more than 3.5 million people experience homelessness each year. 35% of the homeless population are families with children, which is the fastest growing segment of the homeless population. 23% are U.S. military veterans.” According to Amnesty International USA, vacant houses outnumber homeless people by five times. During the last decade and more, a transfer of wealth from the poorer classes to the wealthier classes has affected widespread poverty across the country, later exacerbated by the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. (1) Poverty and homelessness have also become methods of ‘disruption’ used against political activists, such as members of the Occupy Movement. Shut down in 2011 by national security agencies and local police forces collaborating with private business. (2)

My Tax Dollars go to the Parasites of society, the REAL PARASITES the CORPORATIONS!

You know there are a lot of myths going around in Amerikkka. The biggest one is our tax dollars going to help the lazy poor. We hear it all the time from the middle class and from the upper classes. “Those are my tax dollars going to help those parasites.” Okay right but how much. Here is a eye-opener from the LA Progressive, Prejudice of Proverty: Why Americans Hate The Poor and Worship The Rich.

“By and large, your tax bill isn’t going to the poverty-stricken. It’s going to the wealthy. Over the course of a year, you pay $6,000 for corporate welfare.

You read that right. Six K. Six grand. Six thou. Those are your tax dollars at work, too. And it’s a much larger burden on your bank account than the $42 you shell out for the poor.

Most of your money isn’t going to feed hungry children. It’s going to recoup losses for giant transnational corporations like Apple and GE that hide their money overseas to boost profits and avoid paying taxes for things we all need like schools, police and fire departments.

So folks where do you stand. With the wealthy corporations, with their CEO’s with all of the damage they do to the earth and the people who dwell on it? With the rich, with the middle class who points at the poor and says parasite? With those who have sold their soul to what Dorothy Day called a filthy rotten system? We know where we stand.

Let’s end Part 1 with a song written by Jim Garland in 1930. This version is sung by the Almanac Singers.

NOTES

We find these facts in Wikipedia. For more check out the essays on Homelessness in America found HERE.

Egberto Willies writes in his article; Reverse Mortgages: The Final Blow to Middle Class Wealth the following: “The trajectory in this country has been that the wealth and income of the very few at the top grows faster than the growth of the economy as a whole. This means that some of that growth is directly coming out of the pockets of the working middle class in the form of lower wages, extractions from the government (tax dollars, interest payments, etc.), reverse mortgages, higher tuitions as states lower taxes, commercial student loans, etc. This is an unsustainable path and it is leading to a country where the vast majority of citizens will have no assets. They will be functionally indentured servants. They will be nothing but a commodity, a unit of work and service.”

(*) Here’s a good one to make it even clearer why we feel the way we do: The multi-million dollar price tag for apartments with the highest views in New York City is falling.

It may be worth our while to re-read an essay in the Pages of this blog. The essay published awhile back is titled, The Myth of the Cops as our Brothers in the Struggle.

Part 2 we will examine the idea, All you need is love, love, love. How to overthrow the wealthy with kisses, signs, and art, how to make a cop smile at you instead of kill you, and how to have a nice day and not be troubled by it all.